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Out the Kitchen Window

I live on the second floor of this big, old house and often I feel as though I'm living in a treehouse. I have a commanding view of everything around and below me. Perhaps I shouldn't admit it, but I also have a commanding view of the houses around me - and the windows of those houses. I don't peep. No. But sometimes I do observe. How can you not observe? The neighbors on one side of my house are more interesting than the neighbors on the other side of my house. The neighbors on the other side of my house are seemingly of semi-retirement age and have Sunday dinners and a big grown-up style oak dining table and decorate profusely but tastefully for every holiday and change of season. Not too terribly intriguing.

But the neighbors on the interesting side are more mysterious, if not as simple to describe. The porch is hauntingly spare - a great antique-ish teal colored bench, stacks of firewood and not much else. Sometimes a paper. Outside the door on the side of the house there is often a mop and bucket. Why? I do not know. Haven't hazarded a guess. The one occupant I've seen clearly is a beautiful woman with long red hair. I don't know more precisely what she looks like because I don't stare. I don't peep - remember? Plus, I'm always afraid that at the moment I'm looking out, someone will look back and wonder what I'm doing looking out. So I don't, for very long. In one room of the house the walls are painted a beautiful, artfully bold RED. They have a black truck. The truck has a broom and safety sand in its bed, currently. I think they are lesbians. I'm not sure why I think so, but I do. All of this somehow adds up in my mind to a sophisticated next-door mystery.

In the tree out the same window, in addition to the cardinal and the various small brown sparrows, and three recent, medium-sized but nevertheless imposing seeming crows, there is one small, still somewhat greenish leaf that has been there, is still there, hanging on, hanging on, hanging on.

M

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